Résumé
Scotland, traditionally, has high levels of confidence in teachers. Fairness and justice are key concepts in policy and practice in Scottish education. For more than 100 years, the high‐stakes assessment system in Scotland, with the Scottish Higher qualification at its heart, has been crucial to that sense of opportunity and justice. However, in 2019–2020, public confidence in high‐stakes assessment in Scotland, as in other United Kingdom countries, was dented. In Scotland, the Covid‐19 pandemic meant that schools were closed, teachers provided online learning opportunities for pupils working at home and, for the first time in 130 years, it was not possible to run national examinations. To ensure that learners were not further disadvantaged, alternative approaches to gathering evidence for qualifications were instigated. However, these results were challenged as socially unjust and the results that had been nationally moderated were replaced by results based on locally moderated teachers' professional judgement. As Scotland looks to qualifications beyond Covid‐19, trust must be re‐built. This article reports on a participative research project that sought to understand public perceptions of standards and fairness across a range of key communities following this experience. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, we analyse factors which affected trust in National Qualifications under the pandemic. The evidence suggests that when considering what matters for qualifications to be trusted, technocratic solutions are likely to be rejected by stakeholders. Understanding and responding to what led to the mistrust of qualifications in Scotland will be crucial to inform its future qualifications system.
Résumé
Background The global Immunisation Agenda 2030 highlights coverage and equity as a strategic priority goal to reach high equitable immunisation coverage at national levels and in all districts. We estimated inequities in full immunisation coverage associated with socioeconomic, geographic, maternal, child, and place of birth characteristics among children aged 12-23 months in Kenya. Methods We analysed full immunisation coverage (1-dose BCG, 3-dose DTP-HepB-Hib (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type B), 3-dose polio, 1-dose measles, and 3-dose pneumococcal vaccines) of 3,943 children aged 12–23 months from the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey. We disaggregated mean coverage by socioeconomic (household wealth, religion, ethnicity), geographic (place of residence, province), maternal (maternal age at birth, maternal education, maternal marital status, maternal household head status), child (sex of child, birth order), and place of birth characteristics, and estimated inequities in full immunisation coverage using bivariate and multivariate logistic regression. Results Immunisation coverage ranged from 82% [81–84] for the third dose of polio to 97.4% [96.7–98.2] for the first dose of DTP-HepB-Hib, while full immunisation coverage was 68% [66–71] in 2014. After controlling for other background characteristics through multivariate logistic regression, children of mothers with primary school education or higher have at least 54% higher odds of being fully immunised compared to children of mothers with no education. Children born in clinical settings had 41% higher odds of being fully immunised compared to children born in home settings. Children in the Coast, Western, Central, and Eastern regions had at least 74% higher odds of being fully immunised compared to children in the North Eastern region, while children in urban areas had 26% lower odds of full immunisation compared to children in rural areas. Children in the middle and richer wealth quintile households were 43–57% more likely to have full immunisation coverage compared to children in the poorest wealth quintile households. Children who were sixth born or higher had 37% lower odds of full immunisation compared to first-born children. Conclusions Children of mothers with no education, born in home settings, in regions with limited health infrastructure, living in poorer households, and of higher birth order are associated with lower rates of full immunisation. Targeted programmes to reach under-immunised children in these subpopulations will lower the inequities in childhood immunisation coverage in Kenya.